damnation :: essays research papers

Ruining The Grand Places It is apparent, then, that we can non decide the enquiry of development versus preservation by a simple referral to holy judicial writ or an attempt to guess the intention of the founding fathers we must stir up our own minds and decide for ourselves what the national parks should be and what single-valued function they should serve.-Edward Abbey, abjure Solitaire The difference between the present reservoir, with its silent unfertilized shores and debris-choked side canyons, and the original Glen Canyon, is the difference between death and life. Glen Canyon was alive. Lake Powell is a graveyard. Edward Abbey, The Damnation of a Canyon, Beyond the WallWhen you love the Desert southernwest, sometime, somewhere, you will stumble into the writings of Ed Abbey. Like me, Ed was not born in that respect he discovered his love of the place enchantment riding a boxcar through it on a agitate crosswise the US I discovered mine on a trip through myself. His writings helped lead me home, for that is what the desert southerlywest is to me home. I shamt live there for wholeness simple reason, i.e., I bemuse not yet been able to put myself in the financial bit I need to be in. For now, I visit when I can, loosely during my long passs at Christmas.A couple of years ago during one of those, on a whim after spending a a couple of(prenominal) days in Arches National Park, my wife and I detoured to the snowy, icy south rim of the Grand Canyon. We journeyed toward it from the east side but got turned affirm at the National Parks gate the road was snowed under from there on up. After retracing our steps, we traveled down to Flagstaff and spent the night, impulsive in my four by four truck up to the South Rim the next day. It was an eerie experience to stand on the perimeter of the South Rim and see only cloud fog shrouded the canyons great gap, leaving us with visual doubts that anything was really there. Defeated, we strive the Visit ors Center and gathered information so we could go back sometime in the spring or fall with live on more to our liking.We havent done that, yet. This year we had planned to recede a guided river run down the great Grand Canyon. discipline now, that probably is not going to happen, either, due to other family obligations that eat vacation and other financial priorities.